The Man Next Door Part 22

You'd better plug up that hole and stay on your own side of the fence."

He set quiet for a time and then he says:

"I'm darned if I do!"

"Good-by, Jimmie," says I.

"Oh, shucks!" says he. "I'll see you from time to time."

I didn't make no answer but to put the bricks back in the hole on our side.

Now for reasons of my own, not wanting to rile Old Man Wright, I didn't say nothing to him about this hole in the fence. Neither did I say anything to Bonnie Bell about the hired man having came back; because she was doing right well the last day or so, brighter and more cheerful than she had been. That, of course, was because of what Katherine'd told her about her brother Tom. Any girl likes to hear about a young man coming around, of course. Far as any of us could tell, Tom Kimberly might be all right.

Bonnie Bell now, all at once, she taken to wanting to go on the lake with her boat, and she insists our chauffore and her and me must go down and fix up the boat. We didn't none of us like it especial, but she said she hadn't been on the lake for so long she wanted to go once more before it got too cold.

I didn't know nothing about boats, but sometimes I'd go down to the boathouse and watch Bonnie Bell while she was tinkering with the engine or something. One day I went down to the boathouse about the middle of the afternoon, expecting to meet her out on the dock. All at once I hear voices out there, one of them hers. I stopped then, wondering who could of got on our dock.

There wasn't no way from the Wisners' yard to get on our dock now, because the door into their boathouse had been nailed up. The wall run clear down to their garridge, and their garridge faced onto the boathouse, which was lower down. The only way anybody could get on our dock from their place was to get in a boat and come round from the lake.

Then it would of been easy.

I said I heard Bonnie Bell's voice. She was talking; who she was talking to, I didn't know.

"It's all wrong!" says she. "You are presuming too much. Of course I pulled you out of the lake--I would anybody; but your employers are not friends of ours. Even if they were you've no right in the world to speak to me."

Then I heard another voice. I knew it was Jimmie, their hired man. He spoke out and I heard him plain.

"I know I haven't," says he, "none in the world; but I've got to."

"You must not!" says she. "Go away!"

"I'll not," says he. "I can't help it! I tell you I can't help it."

Me being foreman, I reached around now to get hold of a brick or something. I couldn't help hearing what they said.

He'd been ordered off; yet here he was talking to Bonnie!

XV

THE COMMANDMENT THAT WAS BROKE

I stood close up to the boathouse door and was going to step out, but what the hired man was saying to Bonnie Bell was so nervy I had to stop.

Besides, I wanted to hear what she'd say to show him his place.

"From the first minute I saw you," says he, "I couldn't help it. I swore then I'd meet you some day, and sometime----"

"Is this the way?" I heard her say, low.

"It's the only way I have," says he. "If there was a better, don't you think I'd take it? But what chance did I have? I had to make some way; I wouldn't of been any sort of man if I hadn't."

She must just of stood looking at him. I couldn't see.

"I had to find some way to tell you," says he. "What part have I had in this foolish squabble? Was that my fault? I'm only a servant now; but give me a chance to break out of that. Why, when I was out West----"

"Were you out West?" says she, sudden.

"Yes; in the Yellow Bull Valley, among the cowmen--among the real people. You came from that valley yourself."

"Yes, we did," says she; "and we'd far better of stayed there."

"You couldn't of stayed there," says he. "And besides, if you'd stayed there I'd never of met you, or you me."

"Indeed! Was that all my fortune--to meet the servant of my father's enemy?"

"It's all of mine! I'm not your enemy. But suppose now I went to your father and told him--what would he do?"

"He'd maybe kill you," says Bonnie Bell simply; "or else Curly would."

"I wouldn't blame either of them," says he. "I don't want to sneak around. I'm going away again----"

"What made you come back?" she says.

"Because I was sick in my heart. Because I thought I could look over once in a while and see you. But when I came back, here was this cursed fence and I couldn't see you any more. I thought I'd go mad. Maybe I have; I don't know."

"With or without the fence," says Bonnie Bell, "how could our circles cross, yours and mine?"

"Circles!" says he. "Circles! What are circles? I've heard this talk of circles all my life," says he. "I've seen it going on all around me.

It's rot--rot! It's my misfortune to find one so far above me."

"My money?" says she, scornful. "I've a lot of it."

He didn't say a word to that for a long time.

"Did you really think that of me for a minute?" says he at last.

"You take it for granted that I've thought of you at all?" says she.

"I wouldn't of dared," says he--and it sounded like the truth, through the door. "Don't cla.s.s me that way!"

"How can a girl tell?" says she. "Men talk like this to girls----"

"Have they talked to you? Who was it?"

"My social opportunities," says she slow and bitter-like, "seem to be confined to our neighbors' gardener."

"Don't!" says he. "Oh, don't! I don't want to see you hurt, even by your own tongue."